1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to nonwoven panels and methods for their construction, and more particularly to acoustic, thermal and/or structural panels constructed at least partially from waste material constituents ordinarily not suitable for reprocessing, more particularly, a mixture including Asian cardboard.
2. Related Art
In order to reduce the costs associated with manufacturing nonwoven fabrics and materials and to minimize potentially negative affects on the environment, many consumer products are constructed using recycled constituents. For example, automobile manufacturers in the United States use recycled materials to construct nonwoven fabrics and materials having various uses, including sound absorption and/or insulation materials. Some reclaimed or recycled materials used to construct sound absorbing vehicle panels include fabric shoddy, such as, for example, cotton, polyester, nylon, or blends of recycled fabric fibers. Cotton shoddy is made from virgin or recycled fabric scraps that are combined and needled to form a nonwoven fabric. Another product constructed from recycled standard cardboard papers or fibers, used on a limited basis to absorb oils, is Ecco paper. In the process of constructing Ecco paper, the standard cardboard fibers are broken down using conventional wet recycling techniques, wherein constituent binder ingredients of the recycled cardboard are flushed into a waste stream, and the remaining fibers are combined with various additives.
U.S. commercial establishments and consumer product manufacturers, for example, automotive component parts and original equipment manufacturers, receive numerous shipments from various Asian countries, such as China and Korea, in boxes or containers constructed of low grade “Asian cardboard.” The Asian cardboard has constituents of very short, very fine fibers from previously recycled pine cardboard, as well as bamboo and rice fibers. As such, attempts to recycle Asian cardboard into paper, cardboard or other structural panel products through the paper mill process has been met with failure, with the very fine constituents of the Asian cardboard being flushed through the screens or mesh used to carry pulp in the paper/cardboard manufacturing process into the environment via the resulting waste stream of the recycling process. Accordingly, Asian cardboard is typically considered to be waste, and thus, is either sorted from standard cardboard at a relatively high labor cost and sent to landfills (during sorting, the Asian cardboard is readily identifiable from standard cardboard due to its relatively flimsy structure and its pale brown or greenish color) or the entire bale is scraped if there is more than 5% Asian cardboard mixed in a bale of recycled cardboard, also with a relatively high cost to both the product manufacturer and the environment.